


Room For One More Troubled Soul

by wordslinging



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:25:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordslinging/pseuds/wordslinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable, Nux, and a handful of peaceful moments in a world full of fire and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Room For One More Troubled Soul

**Author's Note:**

> SO HOW ABOUT THAT FURY ROAD, HUH. I watched it three times and made a lot of wounded animal noises at all of Nux and Capable's scenes together and then I wrote some words.

The war boy goes still under her hand, all except for his eyes, darting around like a frightened animal's. Capable keeps her hand against his mouth and wonders if he's ever been touched like this before. For her part, it's been a long time since she was this close to any man besides Joe--but she pushes those memories down and away, and focuses on the boy in front of her.

He looks very young and very small lying here, and she wonders how many of the others chasing them are like him, repeating Joe's platitudes and making a big show to hide how scared they are.

"What's your name?" she asks softly.

"Nux," he answers, the ridges of scar tissue on his lips rubbing against her fingers.

"Nux," Capable repeats, feeling the shape of it in her mouth. "What are you going to do now?"

"Don't know." He rolls onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. "I can't go back. I've failed him too many times."

"Three strikes and you're out," Capable murmurs, thinking of Miss Giddy's stories of the Earlier Wives, the ones who failed to produce healthy babies one time too many.

Nux glances back at her. "Are you and your mates gonna toss me out again?" he asks, sounding more resigned than anything.

Capable hesitates. She doesn't think he's a danger, but the others may not agree. "Stay here," she tells him, sitting up. "Don't make any trouble. I'll see if I can find a good time to bring you up to the others."

He nods and she stands up, but before she can climb back through to the front she hears a quiet "hey" and looks back down at him.

"What's your name?" he asks, and she smiles at him.

"I'm Capable."

***

_Stay here_ , Capable told him, but he can hear the rig's engines complaining and feel her wheels spinning uselessly in the mud, and it's not in him to sit here doing nothing. Maybe Furiosa or the bloodbag will just shoot him, but every second they're stuck here is another second closer to all of them being dead anyway.

Capable, sitting in the cab, hisses his name as he scrambles into the driver's seat. "What are you doing?"

"I can help," Nux says, and throws the rig into gear without another thought.

From there on he just functions automatically. He's never been the one to drive the rig before, but he knows every inch of her, and he's been on runs through this territory before. Making himself useful is enough for Furiosa to let him stay, and if he can stay on the rig long enough maybe he can figure out what to do next.

He yields the driver's seat once the engines are cooled down, climbing into the back with the wives. Toast, Cheedo and The Dag toss him wary, suspicious looks, but Capable takes the seat next to him with no hesitation, resting her head on his shoulder.

Nux sits quiet for a while, looking out the window. A few more klicks and they'll be farther out from the Citadel than he's ever been.

"Capable?" he asks in a low voice, and she gives a soft "hmm?" in response. "Where are we going?"

"The Green Place," she replies. "Furiosa told us about it. It's full of trees and plants, more than there are at the Citadel."

Nux tries to picture a place with more green than the Citadel, and can't. "Do you think I can stay there?" he asks.

"Furiosa says everyone's welcome there as long as they're peaceful," she says, and a weight like lead settles in the pit of Nux's stomach. 

"Oh," he says, looking back out the window. It was stupid to get his hopes up, even for a second.

He feels Capable lift her head, feels her eyes on him. "It's okay," she tells him. "You don't have to be a war boy anymore."

He shrugs, not looking at her. "I don't know how to be anything else."

"So we'll teach you," she says, and Nux looks over at her then. "You can teach us how to drive and fix things, and we'll teach you how to live peacefully. Sound like a good deal?"

The warmth that spreads in his chest as he looks at her is strange. Very different from the savage joy of war, which is all he has for comparison.

He smiles at her. "Sounds good to me."

***

The one called The Valkyrie gathers the wives and explains the plan, Furiosa quiet but determined by her side.

"You're all free to make your own choices," The Valkyrie tells them. "It'll be a hard ride across the salt, and if any of you want to go back or stay here we'll leave you what supplies we can spare."

"Maybe we'll find another Green Place somewhere out there," Dag says with a wistful look at the horizon.

"And maybe we'll all just die of thirst," Toast says, and shrugs. "But we know what's behind us. I say we go on."

She glances at Capable, who nods and looks at Cheedo. Cheedo looks down at her hands, folded in her lap.

"Angharad would have wanted to go on. She would have wanted us all to be brave," she says quietly, and looks up. "I've never been brave like her. But I'll try."

Capable puts an arm around her, lets Cheedo tuck her head against her shoulder. "So we go."

Furiosa goes to talk to the man, the one who still hasn't told them his name. Capable glances over to where Nux sits in the lookout post, then looks back to find Toast watching her.

"You care about him a lot, don't you," Toast says, less a question than an opening for Capable to talk about it if she wants.

"He's like us," Capable says. "Joe would have used him up and thrown him away if he'd stayed back there. Except we figured that out a long time ago, and Nux is just learning it." That explains the sympathy and the sense of responsibility she feels for him, but there's more to it than that. "And...I don't know, I just feel good about him."

There are words fluttering around inside her that she doesn't let out, words she only knows from stories about love and romance and destiny. She didn't think the things in those stories happened anymore, at least not for breeders and war boys.

She leaves Cheedo with the others and climbs the rig, taking Nux's hand when he reaches to help her up. He moves over and Capable settles next to him, leaning against his side. She's a little surprised by how comfortable she feels around him. Maybe it's because so far he's only touched her in ways that were gentle, almost childlike--an arm around her shoulders, that kiss on the cheek earlier. Capable wonders if he's even interested in more than that. The time when she might have been--after she grew up enough to know what was what, but before she was chosen as a breeder--seems far distant, and right now she doesn't know if she'll ever get back there.

Nux's voice brings her out of her thoughts. "I always liked getting to be out under the stars. Most nights I'd sleep in the caverns, but sometimes I'd get to be on watch at the Citadel or an overnight run somewhere." Capable cranes her neck to look at him while he looks up at the sky. "I've never seen anything shinier."

"We could always see them from the dome, but they look better from out here." Capable says, tucking her shawl tighter around herself. "We have a plan."

"What if there's nothing out there?" Nux asks after she explains it.

"There has to be _something_ ," Capable says. "It's just a question of whether we'll make it far enough to find out what."

Nux turns his head to look at her, smiling crookedly. "I've been waiting to die as long as I can remember. Can't think of a better way to spend the time I've got left than riding with you."

Capable leans up and kisses him gently, right at the corner of his mouth, and then nestles against his shoulder, looking up at the stars.

***

He was never supposed to make it back, is the thought that goes through Nux's mind when Rictus rips out the engine. 

It's been hard to believe he could have a place in the future the others spoke of, the new start they meant to make. Now, in the sharp clarity of battle, he understands. He's been living on borrowed time and borrowed blood, and the bill was going to come due sooner or later.

At least it waited until Capable was clear of the rig.

Their eyes meet across the gap and there's so much he wishes he could say. He wants to ask her not to forget him. Wants to tell her he's sorry he can't stay with her, but that he knows she'll be all right. Wants to tell her he sees now that he _was_ being spared for something, and it's greater than he ever could have imagined.

But they're coming up on the pass, on the last chance to stop what's left of the war parties, so he says the only thing he has time for and hopes she understands.

Her eyes stay on him and her hand reaches out briefly, and Nux keeps that image fixed in his mind as he jerks the wheel as far over as it'll go. He closes his eyes as the rig tips over, bracing for the impact and thinking of red hair and soft skin and bright eyes that saw more in him than anyone ever had.

_I live._

He doesn't know what comes after this. If the Immortan's Valhalla does exist, he surely has no place there anymore. Maybe there's nothing, maybe something worse.

_I die._

But maybe there's something better. Something the loyal war boy he was could never have imagined. And maybe someday--not soon, he begs whoever might be listening, please not soon--he'll see her again.

_I live again--_


End file.
